Tabula Ra$a is hosting its massive annual music festival in the desert, which every year precedes the massive annual drunken riot in the desert. This is all organized by Zoey's people, including the riot - as Will explains, the citizens need a little chaos now and then, their job is just to keep a lid on it. That will be a problem this year, with history's most ridiculous mayoral election playing out in the background. The city has divided into roughly two camps, supporting each of the major candidates: One is a stern, calculating activist out to restore traditional morality to the city at all costs, the other is Megaboss Alonzo, whose platform is that he will pay you ten dollars if you vote for him. When a horrific crime is broadcast live on the all-seeing social network Blink, the former seems poised to reap the benefits in the polls. The Suits suspect the nature and timing of the crime are a little too convenient and may be a carefully-staged hoax. But in a city in which lies are always served in layers, even that explanation will prove to be far too simple. As tensions ratchet tighter, Zoey comes to realize that this is really a battle of narratives: Every culture needs a collective story to believe in, so it's just a matter of coming up with one and then carefully sculpting reality to make it fit. How hard can that be? They have the whole weekend.

In this blistering sequel to the bestselling cult sensation, "John Dies at the End", our heroes find that books and movies about zombies may have triggered a zombie apocalypse, despite a total world absence of zombies. Hilarious, terrifying, engaging and wrenching, this is a wild ride with two slackers from the midwest who really have better things to do with their time than prevent disaster.

My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrock, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. It is crucial you keep one thing in mind: none of this is my fault.

The New York Times-bestselling John Dies at the End series continues with another terrifying and hilarious tale of Armageddon and the three hopeless heroes standing in its way. I want you to stop what you're doing and ask yourself an important question: If some dark, powerful entity was attempting to ensnare your mind and dominate your will, would you even notice? A competent devil would know that if he revealed his true nature, you'd resist, or seek help. The ideal possession would be more subtle; to you, it would feel like it was your choice. The takeover of your soul would be soothing, satisfying, maybe even kind of fun. An entity armed with such techniques would ensnare millions before anyone caught on. In possibly related news, Dave, John and Amy hear from a panicked mother that a popular toy and its connected smartphone app are demanding flesh from her daughter. Around the world, other owners of the toy are reporting the same. Who, or what, is behind it? What's their endgame? And why does this mother seem to be harboring dark secrets about her family's past? As these three barely-employed amateurs dig for the truth under layers of high-tech occult manipulation and subterfuge, another crucial question lingers: Is there seriously no one else who can handle this?

Progress in vitreo-retinal surgery is mercurial. Since this series is dedicated to new developments the reader is presented with a motley list of topics. The advancements described here may represent generally accepted progress in the field: New instruments, Macular hole surgery, Tumor biopsy. New ideas are set out to be tested for their benefit, for example: AMD surgery, Adjunctive pharmacotherapy. Reflections on incessant clinical problems in vitreo-retina surgery require superior scrutinization of established surgical techniques and indications: Posterior slippage, Inferior breaks, Subclinical retinal detachments. The editors will expand this list in future editions with topics like: new support for buckling surgery, enzyme assisted vitrectomy, new tamponades and other yet unknown fields of progress.

Unlike the cornea or lens, the retina is part of the central nervous system and cannot be replaced. Therefore degeneration of the outer retina is blinding, but trials using devices such as retinal implants which combine biology with technology are showing promise at restoring vision. Macular diseases are the most common cause of blindness in the developed countries. Oedema of the macula may arise in the retina, such as in diabetes mellitus or in epiretinal membrane formation, but most importantly it is age-related insufficiency of the underlying retinal pigment epithelial cell that causes central scotoma.

This volume on vitreoretinal surgery is written by authors who are leaders in these fields of research. It covers the large body of experimental research performed to date on the most urgent clinical problems of vitreoretinal disease. Topics dealt with in the book include:

Methods against etinal Exudation by Thermal Laser

Replacement of the Diseased Retinal Pigment Epithelial (RPE) Cell

Secondary Wound Healing after Retinal Attachment (Proliferative Vitreoretinopathy, PVR)

Adjunct Pharmacotherapy

Heavier than Water Vitreous Substitutes

Conditions Associated with a High Risk of PVR (e.g. Giant Tear Retinal Detachments)

Uveitis Vitrectomy with New Diagnostic and Therapeutic Means

New York Times bestselling author David Wong takes readers to a whole new level with his latest dark comic horror, set in the world of John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders.John Dies at the End's "smart take on fear manages to tap into readers' existential dread on one page, then have them laughing the next" (Publishers Weekly) and This Book is Full of Spiders was "unlike any other book of the genre" (Washington Post). Now, Wong is back with the third installment of this black-humored thriller series.Dave, John and Amy recount what seems like a fairly straightforward tale of a shape-shifting creature from another dimension that is stealing children and brainwashing their parents, but it eventually becomes clear that someone is lying, and that someone is the narrators.The novel you're reading is a cover-up, and the "true" story reveals itself in the cracks of their hilariously convoluted, and sometimes contradictory, narrative.Equal parts terrifying and darkly comedic in his writing, David Wong "will be remembered as one of today's great satirists" (Nerdist).

New York Times bestselling author David Wong's Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick is the latest and greatest sci-fi thriler in the Zoey Ashe Series. Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements. An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move. Mysterious, smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes. A young woman suddenly in charge of the most decadent city in the world. And her very smelly cat. Zoey Ashe is like a fish so far out of water that it has achieved orbit. She finds herself struggling to establish rule over a sprawling empire while Tabula Ra$a's rogue's gallery of larger-than-life crime bosses and corrupt plutocrats smell weakness. Tensions brew across the city. A steamer trunk-sized box arrives at Zoey's door, and she and her bodyguard Wu are shocked to find that it contains a disemboweled corpse, and even more shocked when that corpse, controlled by an unknown party, rises from the box and goes on a rampage through the house. After being subdued, it speaks in an electronic voice, accusing Zoey of being its murderer. Soon, it makes the same claim to the public at large, along with the promise of a cash reward for proof that Zoey and the Suits are behind the crime. Now Zoey is having doubts of her own: Is she 100% sure that someone on her team didn't do this? She also doesn't even have a complete list of what businesses she owns, or what exact laws her organization is still breaking. So what does she really know?

Many of the challenges of the next century will have physical dimensions, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and climate change as well as human dimensions such as economic crises, epidemics, and emergency responses. With pioneering editors and expert contributors, Advanced Geoinformation Science explores how certain technical aspects of geoinformation have been used and could be used to address such global issues. The editors and chapter authors have been involved in global initiatives such as Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and Digital Earth, and research problems such as air quality, public health, and cloud computing. The book delineates the problems communities are likely to face and how advanced geoinformation science can be a part of their solution. It introduces different methods in collecting spatial data as the initial feeds to geoinformation science and computing platforms. It discusses systems for data management, data integration and analysis, the geoinformation infrastructure, as well as knowledge capture, formatting, and utilization. The book then explores a variety of geoinformation applications, highlighting environmental, agriculture, and urban planning uses. Geoinformation science encompasses more than just traditional technologies such as Remote Sensing, GIS, GPS, and supporting disciplines. And although the science continues to become more multidisciplinary, the literature remains compartmentalized according to the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Capturing recent developments in geoinformation science and linking IT with a wide range of Earth sciences, the authors explain how advanced technology and concepts play a significant role in recent advancements. Enhanced with forty-four color illustrations, live examples such as GOS and AirNow, and insights from NASA, EPA, and USGS, the book provides a vision for the future and explores how to bring that vision into reality.

The first book in the Zoey Ashe series of sci-fi thrillers and winner of the 2016 Alex Award by New York Times bestselling author, David Wong. Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements.An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move.Mysterious, smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes.A young woman from the trailer park. And her very smelly cat.Together, they will decide the future of mankind.Get ready for a world in which anyone can have the powers of a god or the fame of a pop star, in which human achievement soars to new heights while its depravity plunges to the blackest depths. A world in which at least one cat smells like a seafood shop's dumpster on a hot summer day.This is the world in which Zoey Ashe finds herself, navigating a futuristic city in which one can find elements of the fantastic, nightmarish and ridiculous on any street corner. Her only trusted advisor is the aforementioned cat, but even in the future, cats cannot give advice. At least not any that you'd want to follow.Will Zoey figure it all out in time? Or maybe the better question is, will you? After all, the future is coming sooner than you think.

If you're browsing the web, using public APIs, making and receiving electronic payments, registering and logging in users, or experimenting with blockchain, you're relying on cryptography. And you're probably trusting a collection of tools, frameworks, and protocols to keep your data, users, and business safe. It's important to understand these tools so you can make the best decisions about how, where, and why to use them. Real-World Cryptography teaches you applied cryptographic techniques to understand and apply security at every level of your systems and applications. about the technologyCryptography is the foundation of information security. This simultaneously ancient and emerging science is based on encryption and secure communication using algorithms that are hard to crack even for high-powered computer systems. Cryptography protects privacy, secures online activity, and defends confidential information, such as credit cards, from attackers and thieves. Without cryptographic techniques allowing for easy encrypting and decrypting of data, almost all IT infrastructure would be vulnerable. about the book Real-World Cryptography helps you understand the cryptographic techniques at work in common tools, frameworks, and protocols so you can make excellent security choices for your systems and applications. There's no unnecessary theory or jargon-just the most up-to-date techniques you'll need in your day-to-day work as a developer or systems administrator. Cryptography expert David Wong takes you hands-on with cryptography building blocks such as hash functions and key exchanges, then shows you how to use them as part of your security protocols and applications. Alongside modern methods, the book also anticipates the future of cryptography, diving into emerging and cutting-edge advances such as cryptocurrencies, password-authenticated key exchange, and post-quantum cryptography. Throughout, all techniques are fully illustrated with diagrams and real-world use cases so you can easily see how to put them into practice. what's inside Best practices for using cryptography Diagrams and explanations of cryptographic algorithms Identifying and fixing cryptography bad practices in applications Picking the right cryptographic tool to solve problems about the readerFor cryptography beginners with no previous experience in the field. about the author David Wong is a senior engineer working on Blockchain at Facebook. He is an active contributor to internet standards like Transport Layer Security and to the applied cryptography research community. David is a recognized authority in the field of applied cryptography; he's spoken at large security conferences like Black Hat and DEF CON and has delivered cryptography training sessions in the industry.

Progress in vitreo-retinal surgery is mercurial. Since this series is dedicated to new developments the reader is presented with a motley list of topics. The advancements described here may represent generally accepted progress in the field: New instruments, Macular hole surgery, Tumor biopsy. New ideas are set out to be tested for their benefit, for example: AMD surgery, Adjunctive pharmacotherapy. Reflections on incessant clinical problems in vitreo-retina surgery require superior scrutinization of established surgical techniques and indications: Posterior slippage, Inferior breaks, Subclinical retinal detachments. The editors will expand this list in future editions with topics like: new support for buckling surgery, enzyme assisted vitrectomy, new tamponades and other yet unknown fields of progress.

Management of Vitreo-Retinal Disease: A Surgical Approach provides a comprehensive guide to the diagnosis, clinical management and surgery of many retinal disorders. As such it will be invaluable to both trainee and consultant ophthalmologists but will also be very useful to optometrists and ophthalmic opticians who are becoming increasingly involved in the diagnosis and treatment of ophthalmic disorders. The authors' wealth of experience in the field is presented to the reader in a didactic text supported by illustrations and photographs (many in colour) which enable the reader to readily convert the knowledge presented into practice.

An apprentice sushi chef and a mysterious blue-eyed woman share a bottle of wine inside a climate-controlled otter tank. The Great Wall of China grumbles as workers forego construction to watch an imperial game of baseball. A young woman tries to imagine a future unsullied by her family's history of untimely death. First issued in 1991, Pangs of Love introduced David Wong Louie's bold storytelling. The son of Chinese immigrants, he centered his stories around characters who are in conflict with their place in the world, disconnected from both American society and their own families. The depth of his portrayals renders their experiences of love, envy, loneliness, loss, and duty universal-informed by their heritage yet not confined by it. These twelve short stories and one essay swerve from the absurd to longing for love, understanding, or simply a morsel of food. Pangs of Love and Other Writings makes Louie's debut book available again, along with an additional short story and an extraordinary autobiographical essay, "Eat, Memory," in which he reflects on life without food after throat cancer took away his ability to swallow. Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen contributes a foreword elucidating Louie's role in shaping contemporary Asian American literature, while an afterword by literary scholar King-Kok Cheung retraces the three phases of Louie's career.

An apprentice sushi chef and a mysterious blue-eyed woman share a bottle of wine inside a climate-controlled otter tank. The Great Wall of China grumbles as workers forego construction to watch an imperial game of baseball. A young woman tries to imagine a future unsullied by her family's history of untimely death. First issued in 1991, Pangs of Love introduced David Wong Louie's bold storytelling. The son of Chinese immigrants, he centered his stories around characters who are in conflict with their place in the world, disconnected from both American society and their own families. The depth of his portrayals renders their experiences of love, envy, loneliness, loss, and duty universal-informed by their heritage yet not confined by it. These twelve short stories and one essay swerve from the absurd to longing for love, understanding, or simply a morsel of food. Pangs of Love and Other Writings makes Louie's debut book available again, along with an additional short story and an extraordinary autobiographical essay, "Eat, Memory," in which he reflects on life without food after throat cancer took away his ability to swallow. Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Thanh Nguyen contributes a foreword elucidating Louie's role in shaping contemporary Asian American literature, while an afterword by literary scholar King-Kok Cheung retraces the three phases of Louie's career.

In the ever-changing field of vitreo-retinal surgery, the factor that may best distinguish a great surgeon from a good one is the ability to avoid and manage complications. Within the pages of "Complications of Vitreo-Retinal Surgery," readers will discover the practical information ophthalmic surgeons need to address a wide range of intra- and postoperative complications associated with vitreo-retinal surgery. The text addresses a broad range of complications, occurring in both established and emerging surgical techniques.Each potential complication is analyzed in detail, including information on pathogenesis and risk factors. Chapters are organized by potential complication, with each addressed by a single contributing author as if he/she is the surgeon on the case. While created specifically for vitreo-retinal surgeons, this book will provide useful information for other members of the surgical team as well as for general ophthalmologists, residents, and optometrists who see patients before and after vitreo-retinal procedures. This handy reference delivers...
- Detailed coverage addresses specific complications related to scleral buckling, pneumatic retinopexy, and 20-, 23-, and 25-gauge vitrectomy
- Expert contributors offer advice on avoidance and management of each complication, and offer guideposts for projected clinical outcomes.
- Bulleted points deliver clinical pearls on the prevention and management of specific complications.
- Real-world clinical scenarios provide practical, stepwise guidance in the management of each issue.

Winner of the 2000 Book Award in Prose from the Association for American Studies and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for 2002!

The award-winning author of Pangs of Love triumphs with "a work that manages to be consistently funny, infinitely sad, and surprisingly exhilarating... truly memorable." (Newsday)